Understanding the motivation and decisions that led to an end result allows you to better gauge whether they're likely to, say, change their stance on a topic,

Understanding the motivation and decisions that led to an end result allows you to better gauge whether they're likely to, say, change their stance on a topic, or other decisions they're likely to make going forward. For example, I submit that it is extraordinarily unlikely that Microsoft will actually end the Win10 upgrade program on July 29th, because their primary goal is to migrate as many people away from their aging older platforms as possible, onto a platform they can find ways to monetize into infinite incremental upgrades.